A 21st century statistical system must
provide information about the dynamic economy quickly, using data
assets efficiently while minimizing the burden of collecting and
providing data and fully preserving confidentiality. The Census
Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program
has demonstrated the power and usefulness of linking multiple
business and employee data sets with state-of-the-art
confidentiality protections to build a longitudinal national frame
of jobs. This program supports the Department of Commerce plan to
improve American competitiveness and measures of innovation. It
provides federal, state, and local policymakers and planners,
businesses, private sector decision makers, and Congress with
comprehensive and timely national, state, and local information on
the dynamic nature of employers and employees. The LEHD program
significantly reduces the overall effort for the generation of its
quarterly data product by: • Leveraging exiting federal
administrative and state data • Avoiding costs required to expand
existing surveys to collect the information directly • Reducing
respondent burden by limiting the number of required resources to
just the owners of the required data The LEHD program is a member
of a partnership between the US Census Bureau and the Labor Market
Information (LMI) agencies from 49 states, the District of
Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin
Islands. This partnership supports the development, promotion, and
distribution of the following data products: • QWI Public Use—The
flagship data product of the LEHD program is the QWI Public Use
which provides 32 statistical indicators on employment, job
creation and destruction, accessions (hires and recalls), and
separations (e.g. exits and layoffs). These statistics are released
for the following by-groups for all quarters for which data are
available for each partner state: - County, metropolitan, and
workforce investment area - Age, sex, race, and ethnicity
categories - Detailed industry (i.e., type, firm age, firm size) •
LEHD Origin Destination Employment Statistics (LODES)—LODES data
provide detailed spatial distributions of workers’ employment and
residential locations and the relation between the two at the
Census Block level. LODES also provides characteristic detail on
age, earnings, industry distributions, and local workforce
indicators. • Job-to-Job Flows (J2J)—Job-to-Job Flows (J2J) is a
new set of statistics on worker reallocation in the United States
constructed from the LEHD data. The initial release of national
data distinguishes hires and separations associated with job change
from hires and separations to non-employment. Future releases will
be published at more detailed levels of aggregations, and will
tabulate the origin and destination job characteristics of workers
changing jobs. These data products highlight state and local labor
market dynamics that cannot be learned from other statistical
sources and are therefore used in many different arenas. For
example, the QWI can be used as local-labor-market controls in
regression analysis; to identify long-term trends; to provide local
context in performance evaluations, and a host of other
applications.
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that
the collection of information encompassed by this request complies
with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR
1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding
the proposed collection of information, that the certification
covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a
benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control
number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of
these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked
and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.
Attachment B - LEHD PRA - Federal Register Comment Response.docx
LEHD OMB 83-I.pdf
LEHD Information Collection